But here is what we did:
Math: Saxon Math 5/4, no surprise here right? But one thing I liked that changed this year was that they had timed tests for them to do daily. This really helped with getting those facts down. At first it was a little bit rough because of the complaining, but once they realized that everyday at 8:30 we would do a test they stopped complaining and just did it. And in order to motivate a little bit more there were time limits for the different tests - some were one minute and others were five minutes, if they finished in under that time they got a special treat - usually a mint cause I love those and have them around the house.
English: First Language Lessons. Again I found that she was a little bit behind where she should be, so we started somewhere in the middle of level 3. She caught on quick and we were able to get all the way through level 4. I am not an English person - like I have shared before - so this was not my favorite. I loved it when my husband was home and would do her English for me. But they work - there is good reinforcement of the concepts and a good review. We did get a little bored of the poem review, and so we would substitute a scripture or something more interesting for her.
Writing: We did Writing With Ease like I did with my second grader. It was easy for her and she could do it by herself - except for the review questions that followed the story. I liked this because she seemed to struggle telling the story back in 2-3 sentences, she wanted to give me every detail and so that was good practice for her.
Spelling: we started out with Spelling Power, but like her brother, it was not working for her. I don't remember exactly what we didn't like, but we switched up to Spelling Workout level D. This was much better because she also needed that extra practice on the words. I think she didn't like being tested on words she had never studied before. But we liked the spelling workouts and would just continually test her on the words she missed. And there was much less complaining - which made this change fabulous!
History: Story of the World - same as with my second grader.
Science: like I said our bringing science home experiments were too much for me, so I had her work on reports. She would take our Kingfisher Encyclopedia of Science and pick a topic that was of interest to her and read up on it in there and also online and then on Friday she would give us a report of what she learned. This seemed to work really well for us. I tried my hardest to leave this up to her and not remind her to do it, which was hard sometimes, but for the most part it worked. I would make her read them to us to practice public speaking.
Art: Again lessons from Dad. She was mildly interested in the Art Treasury book, but really enjoyed learning from Dad.
Music: Piano lessons - this girl is fabulous at the piano, she will always practice each song three times, every day! I just wish, oh how I wish, that there were more students like her. The only downside is that when there is a new concept she gets frustrated easy and that is not so easy to get a long with. She started working on some simplified classical pieces which was fun for me to hear, because being a teacher I hear a lot of the same songs over and over and over and over again!
PE - we would do various things, fit deck for kids, bike riding, running, jumping on the trampoline, going to the kids gym here, going to the big gym and playing basketball, riding the scooters, etc. However in the winter we got a little bit lazy - it was just so darn cold that we did not want to even leave the house.
Handwriting/Typing: we did various handwriting worksheets, but they were like pulling teeth to try and get them done. But they really enjoyed typing practice. I would use this again. We used this website and saw some results with it - mainly increased speed and accuracy. www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing
I would have to say that homeschooling her is easy because she is a perfectionist and likes to get things done. Granted there were some days that would take forever, and we would but heads sometimes but this worked for us. However that being said she is a social person and longs for public school and the social interaction that it provides. And living out here in the middle of nowhere she was just not getting it. Needless to say when I told her that she could go to public school next year she had quite the squeal! We will see how it goes though!
Today I got to spend some quality time with my sewing machine, so maybe I will have something cool to show you soon! But I also have my review of 6th grade I hope to do tomorrow!
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